I thought this would be easy to find in here but I've been searching for the last couple of days and I can't find them anuwhere. I did find a collection done by OTR Researches outside of the TP Ning site, on the main Times Past page, but almost everyone who reviewed it said the downloads were corrupted, out of sequence and the encodes were so bad they couldn't listen to them. I know there are good copies somewhere because I listen to them on Radio Spirits everyday. Would there be any here?
Thanks,
Jamie
Replies
http://otrarchive.blogspot.com/2009/04/yours-truly-johnny-dollar-ot...
Thanks for the link, Robert. That was the site where I found the bad reviews. Here is one, for example:
The "OTRR" (whoever they are) does themselves a disservice here. While certain scattered episodes are okay, a large amount (nearly three out of every four on CD #7, for instance) are re-encodes of damaged 32kbps mp3s. Some others seem to have originated from ancient 4-bit .WAV files - the quality on those is positively dreadful, sounding like they were recorded from an international long distance phone call.
A distant, hissy tape is one thing - that's completely understandable, and part of the nature of the business. However, when the source material has been willfully butchered through bad encoding, it really puts a damper on my enjoyment. Whole sentences can be clipped out due to the previous bad encoding, and there is no way I would recommend listening to any of these on headphones due to the near-constant stream of random "BLIP" and "BLOP" sounds.
So, after reading that, I thought I would just come over here and see if anyone had cleaner copies posted inside of the Ning site. It looks like after reading the replies that I will have to settle for the work that OTRR have done or pay for cleaner copies from RS, Audible or OTRland, as Kurt suggested.
Thanks,
Jamie
If you don't like The OTRR ones I just downloaded over 600 of the Johnny Dollar shows from Usenet. I went through picking one at random here and there so many times I could almost recite the intro from by memory. These don't sound bad at all. If the others don't suit you, even though I hate to take up that kind of space on paid storage I will upload them a folder one at a time for you to download and when you get each done I will delete it and put up another. Try the ones from Robert first, an OTRR certified set is not necessarily the set currently on the OTRR site. Robert lifted a lot of stuff, being an OTRR member, before it got deleted butchered and actually went private so these may not be that bad. I will look, I had a set I collected from different places many years ago when OTR was still abundant and free and paid vendors were looked down upon. It is not on my Hard Drives so when I get a chance I will through my CDS and DVDs recorded before you could get large accessory HDs and maybe we could work out something. -- R
O.K. I'm downloading the zip drives from OTRR now. As one of the reviewers noted, one of the zips won't even open up. Let me listen to wait for them to download, see what will open and give a listen to some and see how they are and then I will get back and let you know what I find.
If we do end up going the other route and you upload them temporarily, once I have them, I will upload them to the 1on1 site I'm in the process of trying to get set up (their mid tier package has unlimited storage space) and then can create a page here and upload them all for the rest of the group to enjoy.
Thanks for going to the trouble of finding them on Usenet and downloading them. I appreciate that very much. Will get back to you soon with what I find.
Jamie
The link is OTR Archive and was one of Robert's (Calfkiller's) sites, not internet archive. ------ R
Yes, I just found that out the hard way. One site had 14 zip downloads and the first 8 were corrupted so I deleted them after downloading. I came back and followed Robert's link and found 11 zip downloads. I downloaded them and they were all good. I then listened to the first one, the last one and 5 in between (with the different actors as Johnny Dollar). There appears to be just about 700 or so. There looks like there is only a slight issue with the ones in 1955 but it was only the person who named them--not the audios themselves. They added some dashes which messed up the order so you couldn't sort them by name. As I listened to the audios, I took out all the dashes and sorted them and all is well.
Although I haven't listened to all 700, obviously, the ones I did listen to were good. My favorite one, The Price of Fame Matter, with Vincent Price, was good quality. I think I can say I have enough to listen to for a very long time. I was hoping to find about 60 and I found 10 times that amount. I don't have an issue with the sound quality. Some are 32, some are 64, and I even found a few that were 128. They were all good and really, not too far off what Radio Spirits have produced.
I hope they're proud of themselves for attempting to deprive us of some of the best of old time radio and not really achieving a much better quality than what you guys have found for me. They only thing they really accomplished is losing another customer, thanks to their greed.
Thanks again everyone, for all the help in finding these for me.
Jamie
Collectors are the best people to ask especially those that have been around since year one like Bob, Robert and myself, although my experience is sporadic for the first part of my collecting and picked up after I became disabled and my medical career didn't take up a large part of my life. I also answered your query on tags. --------------------- R
O.K. Thanks. I just read the MP3 tag info on the other tread. I think I understand it now.
Like I said, you can find them from here, but if your expectations are to hear the sound quality that comes through on the reworked offerings that RS puts out you might be disappointed. I looked yesterday and knew that we had some in a site connected to here but you already told me that you thought the OTRR set was bad. Anyways what you get here is the original OTRR stuff lifted before everything good was pulled. If you don't mind a little scratchy or having to strain your ear a bit to catch a line here or there you will like the set. Of course that is what real OTR is all about. The little imperfections make you realize that these shows are 60-75 years old. I never was much for RS shows that have been put through every audio device imaginable to make the sound like they could have been recorded yesterday. Try the link from Robert first, then try OTRland in Canada if the link from Robert doesn't suit you. Even buying the Canadian set you will save $100 over RS. Only in the worst case if you really can't listen to either of those would I buy RS stuff. Well, I wouldn't buy it anyways because I don't agree with their ethics. --------------- R
Hey Rick,
I didn't exactly say I thought they were bad. I said the reviewers said they were bad. I haven't actually even listened to them yet. I was so put off by the reviewer I quoted in my reply to Robert that I didn't even bother. I'm going to go in now and give them a listen. I'm with you, in that I think a lot of the OTR is best with all it's crackle and pop. It makes it sound authentic and I love that. But bad encodes and chopped up audios are never fun to listen to. Imperfections is one thing. Bad audio sound is another. I had been looking all over for Stephen King's Storm of the Century. When I finally found it, the audio was sooooo bad....very faint and couldn't even tell what the narrator was saying. I ended up having to strain so hard to listen to it, it actually hurt. Unfortunately, I had to delete it. That's what I mean by bad audio.
I do appreciate the effort OTRR has done. It's not like I'm complaining. I was just looking for cleaner copies. I didn't realize there was going to be so much hollabaloo from the recording companies over rights and such. I'm going to listen to OTRR's copies today and decide. If they're really that bad, I'll go visit Kurt's site. I agree with you about Radio Spirits, now that I know the behind the scenes going ons. I won't be purchasing from them......if I end up purchasing at all.
Thanks, Rick, Thomas, Robert and Kurt for your input and help.
Jamie
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